1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the production of hydrocarbons, and more particularly concerns the production of hydrocarbons using air, water and wind energy as raw materials.
2. Brief Description of Prior Art
There is an ongoing erosion of energy generating capacity in North America, especially with respect to base load generating facilities. Base load energy is the least costly energy to produce by power companies. Because of environmental and industry regulation and significant market changes, utilities foresee that base load energy production will not keep pace with demand, therefore requiring the generation of additional energy using other more costly means. This is especially troublesome because base-load energy plants are usually the most costly and time consuming to construct, traditionally being coal, nuclear, heavy oil or hydro-electric plants. Some new combined cycle plants have slightly shorter construction time, but they are still costly to build and are dependant on natural gas or light oil, both fuels with a volatile price history.
The electric utility companies could increase their base-load energy capacity by 30 percent overnight if they use their peak load combustion turbines for base load power. Presently this is not possible because these turbines are simple-cycle gas turbines with a maximum thermal-dynamic efficiency of 25 percent. Additionally, they can only be run for a limited number of hours a day since they do not conform to air pollution standards. Because of these factors, they cannot be run profitably and are used only to make up for small, short term power short falls, as might occur during the morning and evening peak demand times. To operate these plants for base load profitability, in an environmentally clean manner, power producers would require a fuel that does not cause noxious emissions and sells at an economically feasible price. Several fuels possess one or the other of these desired traits, but none possesses both traits.